Peach Leaf Bellflower

[Kurt_Horne]

• NIKON CORPORATION NIKON Z 6_2
• NIKKOR Z 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S Z TC-2.0x
• ƒ/5.6
• 290mm
• 1/640s
• ISO 1600
• Sat, 15 June 2024 9:59 AM

Sometimes it's just nice to photograph something that doesn't move around so much or seem to hide behind every twig and leaf in the forest I was playing around with the DoF on this one and curious as to what others think. Photo is pretty much as out of camera, no cropping but a little adjustments around shadows to tone down the brightness of the original green. 1/640, 5.6, 1600, at 290mm. Nikon Z6ii with the Nikon 70-200 lens on a 2x.

 

[Jonathan Ashton]

Hi Kurt, I see your fascinationation wih DOF and it is well worth experimenting with. I think you have exposed Ok but your DOF is too limited. The thing to bare in mind is the size of subject in your frame, i.e magnification. Here you have filled the frame with subject and your DOF is relatively shallow at 5.6, your plane of focus is limited to the top petal and does not reach to the stamens. With a subject like this it is important to decide precisely what you wish to portray, i.e. is it the uppermost flower or is it going to be the floret.
I would suggest a couple of things, first if conditions permit use a tripod so you can use a smaller aperture secondly use a smaller combo this will have the effect of giving you a greater DOF because the subject will be smaller in the frame, use manual focus so you precisely determine the focal point, consider focus bracketing this would give you precisely the DOF that you desire. Hope this helps - ask questions if you wish... good luck!.

 

[Kurt_Horne]

Thanks Jonathan, very helpful. My tripod isn't quite adequate for my camera unless using the smallest of my lenses (also hate carrying it around lol). I am intrigued by the second part of your suggest, 'using a smaller combo' what do you mean by smaller combo? I like the idea of manual focusing but, and it's likely my eyes, things always look more in focus on my view finder than when I get back to the big screen so found it very hard to manually fine tune, but have tried multiple shots with a series of focus points to see which turns out best. I do like the idea of focus stacking (assume that is same as bracketing), I've tried it a couple of times in post but it was a long and arduous process with my program but practice makes it easier. One feature I do wish I had on camera. I think the focus stacking holds the most promise for future!

 

[Jonathan Ashton]

Kurt, I was suggesting a lens of shorter focal length, this would enable you to get greater DOF.
I am not famiar with Nikon I don't' know if you can stack or bracket in camera (in Olympus stack means the images are stacked in camera and a composite image is produced by the camera) , bracketing means a series of raw images would be taken which would then have to be processed on PC. Sounds like a lot of faff but it isn't you soon get used to it. There are lots of tutorials on YouTube - worth having a look.

 

[Kurt_Horne]

Kurt, I was suggesting a lens of shorter focal length, this would enable you to get greater DOF.
I am not famiar with Nikon I don't' know if you can stack or bracket in camera (in Olympus stack means the images are stacked in camera and a composite image is produced by the camera) , bracketing means a series of raw images would be taken which would then have to be processed on PC. Sounds like a lot of faff but it isn't you soon get used to it. There are lots of tutorials on YouTube - worth having a look.

Thanks Jonathan, my model of Nikon doesn't support doing the stack in camera, though it will produce the series of images and focal variations that then have to be processed in post. Tinkering with that over the holidays, but so far no luck, only program crashes